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The fight to find Florentine kids

Divorce leads to child abduction

Editorial Staff

October 27, 2011

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On October 14, Italian and
Florence newspapers reported that Marianne Grin, a US-Russian citizen
who has lived in Florence for over 10 years, had abducted her
children over the summer. Grin was being divorced by her U.S. husband
in Florence, and, after having lost custody of the couple's four
children in 2010, she allegedly kidnapped them and took them to
Russia.

Three of the four children
were born in Florence, and all were raised and attend schools here.
Grin uprooted them from their schools, friends and daily lives in
Florence, and taking them to another country, Russia, where they have
absolutely no family or friends.
Moreover, doing so without without permission from their father, who
is their legal custodian, is an international crime. However, despite
this, the laws of different jurisdictions and geographical locations
make international child abduction stemming from parental disputes
among the most complicated cases to resolve.

A 45-year-old lawyer
educated at Harvard, Grin disappeared from Florence in late August
with the children, all between the ages of 5 and 14. She is known to
be in Saint Petersburg but has denied their father or the U.S.
authorities any communication with the children. She has also clashed
with the U.S. consulate officials who are helping to find and
communicate with the kids.

Meanwhile, the
Russian press has come to her defence. In an article on September 27,
the Pravda newspaper described her as a ‘courageous' mother who took her
children away from an allegedly ‘sadistic and violent' father.
The father, however, claims to have proof that these accusations of
violence against him and all of his familiy members, including his
new fiance, are part of Grin's larger strategy to convince the
courts and Russian authorities to protect her and her children.
Although Russia has recently signed the Convention on International
Child Abduction, for ‘bureaucratic reasons' the legislation is
still waiting to be ratified. The children's father and his family
fear Grin has taken the kids to Russia, not because she has family or
contacts there, but because it may be easier to keep the kids away
from their family and lives here in Florence.

The children's father,
who prefers to remain anonymous, 49 and also a lawyer, firmly denies
his separated wife's accusations of violence and is concerned about
his children's physical and mental health and their condition in
Russia, a country they do not know. Dr. Armando Ceccarelli, the
psychologist appointed by the judge in the divorce case described
Grin as ‘a person psychologically disturbed,' driven ‘by
paranoid fantasies of being the object of "plots" and
"persecutions" by the court and by the institutions.' The
relationship with her children ‘is at a serious psycho-pathogenic
risk,' Ceccarelli wrote.

Despite these findings and warnings from the children's father and his lawyer about
Grin's flight risk, the Italian court did not order that visits
between Grin and her children be protected.

‘I just want my children
to be well and to come home,' the children's father said. 'Let's
forget for a moment that this is a divorce, that's she's angry and
wants to punish me and those around me, or is psychologically
unstable. This is a crime against children. They've been abruptly
removed from all their friends, their father, both their
grandmothers, their little cousin in Pistoia, aunt and uncles. It's
just not right. We want them safe, and returned home.'

Parental child
abduction is by far the most common child abduction and often occurs
when the parents separate or begin divorce proceedings. Accordino to
data, a total of 2,703 children were involved in the 1,965 reported
international parental abductions in 2009.